Serial email ebooks and Christmas rereads

I subscribed to Dracula Daily due to peer pressure from tumblr and Twitter, and it was fun to slowly read the book via emails, which sent you the diary entries and letters that make up the book on the day they were "written". It was a fun and unique way to read the book, which I'd read ages before, and I liked seeing the memes and social media posts about it as we all read the book together and chatted about what our good friend Jonathan Harker had written. I don't think I'll do Dracula Daily again, but thanks to their recommendations I've subscribed to other ebooks-via-email subscriptions. Truly this is the best way to use Substack. 3.5 stars. Trigger warnings: blood (including consumption of), gore, body horror, off-page child murder, child endangerment, vampires kidnapping/feeding on children and adults, death, wolves/large dogs, various forms of horror

 

One of DD's recommendations was for Dickens December, which split up A Christmas Carol into equal-ish segments that were emailed out December 1 to 26. I also enjoyed reading ACC this way; I find the short email every day prompts more reflection than just reading the book in one gulp, which is what I usually do. I like to reread A Christmas Carol for Christmas anyway, and this was a fun way to do it. 4 stars. Trigger warnings: ghosts, supernatural horror, poverty, classism, death, homelessness mentions, prison mentions, a character flirts in a way that would be considered sexual harassment today

 

I reread Christmas with Anne, a compilation of L.M. Montgomery's holiday stories and the Christmas chapters from two Anne of Green Gables books. I reread it every year, and find the stories to be nice and old-fashioned in a comforting way. The non-Anne stories fall into one of three camps: an estranged family is reconciled during the holidays, stuck-up people learn humility due to sharing merry-making with others, or a poor family's children are gifted Christmas in a way they could not have imagined. Others may find the stories repetitive, but I don't mind it, having been inoculated due to repeated readings of the Christmas in My Heart books, which has even more repetitive stories despite being a 40-something book series. I believe this is now out of print, but you may be able to buy an inferior cover version that isn't as nice. 4 out of 5 stars, permanent collection. Trigger warnings: poverty, classism, xenophobia, lookism, fatphobia, sexism, controlling parental figure, death, loss, grief, past child abuse and neglect mentions, 1 brief infertility mention, loneliness, estranged families

 

Another Christmas reread was Jan Brett's picture book The Twelve Days of Christmas, which was a gift from my kindergarten teacher when I was five. It's beautifully, sumptuously illustrated, with lots of lovely details and interpretations of each of the true love's gifts. Truly a picture book to lose yourself in. 5 stars, permanent collection.

picture courtesy of Abebooks

What my nearly 2 year old nephew calls his family members and why

his mom: mama

his dad: dada

his brother (3 months): baby or bibi (beebee). You would think he'd call the baby bebe as he only speaks Spanish (and a handful of English words), but he only uses the English word because it's a family habit to say "baby" in English even if the entire sentence/conversation is in Spanish. No one knows why. We all do this all the time and he's heard us do it, hence, baby. I think bibi is him saying baby in affectionate baby talk about/to his brother, like his adult family members do.

his maternal grandmother (my mom): mom (in a Spanish accent). This is because whenever my mom is around him, he's always hearing me, my siblings, and his parents call my mom Mom. It's hilarious. My sister's trying to emphasize she's Abuelita, so he occasionally calls her 'ita (Lita) now (see why below). 

his maternal grandfather (my dad): 'ito (Lito). It was decided early on that my sister's (and my) parents would be abuelito/abuelita and my brother-in-law's parents would be abuelo/abuela to differentiate them, and my dad decided he wanted to be called Lito, which is of course the second half of Abuelito. It's an extra-affectionate way of saying grandpa. For some reason saying ita/ito is easier than saying Lito/Lita.

me (his aunt): tia (aunt in Spanish). Although now he is starting to glancingly say "tia 'shel" or another adorable mispronunciation of my name. I love it.

my older brother (his uncle): tio (uncle in Spanish). My sister is also trying to get him to say his aunts and uncles' names, so he occasionally attempts a "tio 'ado". 

my younger brother (his uncle): otro tio (other uncle). lmao. He left before our nephew could grasp Tio Jon.

my sister-in-law (his aunt): Tia Amy, clear as a bell. One of his favorite books has a nurse named Amy in it, so he got her name right away even though she and my brother were only here for the weekend.

his paternal grandmother: otra mom (other mom) to differentiate her from 'mom' (my mom). lmaooooo  My brother-in-law also calls his mom Mom.

his paternal grandfather: I am not sure! I have never heard him address his grandfather when I'm around. I will have to ask my sister.

his paternal aunts: otra tia to differentiate them from me. lmaooooooo. Yes I am very smug about this. He is starting to say "Tia [name]" though so it won't last long. He also initially called Amy "otra tia" until he learned her name.

his paternal uncles: one can only assume otro tio, although I've never heard him address them since he wasn't talking as much the last time we all hung out.

his cousins: I think the only one he really knows/remembers is his older cousin Daniel, whom my nephew addresses by name (Spanish pronunciation). If he talks to/about his little cousins (two of his aunts had babies before and after his brother was born), he probably calls them baby as well (or otro baby).

I love hanging out with my nephew. He is so smart and curious and inquisitive and is picking up language like gangbusters. He'll run around and say/yell the family member's moniker when he sees them or when he wants their attention. It's so cute. He'll also grab or point at stuff that belongs to/he associates with us and say our names. I love that little guy.

A note

Hello Russian search engine bots, casual googlers trying to find a book review for a specific book I've happened to read/write one for, and perhaps even nosy people who accessed my blogspot through a different social medium back when I linked to it there:

I just wanted to mention that the HarperCollins strike is in full effect, and as such I will not be reviewing books published by HarperCollins or any of its subsidiaries until the strike is over. (My understanding is that buying HC books is fine, as the strikers/union does not want to deprive the authors of their income.) 

I stand with the HarperCollins workers and hope HC will do the right thing. People deserve to be paid a living wage for their work.

Book Review: The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

A year after an accidentally whirlwind grand tour with her brother Monty, Felicity Montague has returned to England with two goals in mind—avoid the marriage proposal of a lovestruck suitor from Edinburgh and enroll in medical school. However, her intellect and passion will never be enough in the eyes of the administrators, who see men as the sole guardians of science.

But then a window of opportunity opens—a doctor she idolizes is marrying an old friend of hers in Germany. Felicity believes if she could meet this man he could change her future, but she has no money of her own to make the trip. Luckily, a mysterious young woman is willing to pay Felicity’s way, so long as she’s allowed to travel with Felicity disguised as her maid.

In spite of her suspicions, Felicity agrees, but once the girl’s true motives are revealed, Felicity becomes part of a perilous quest that leads them from the German countryside to the promenades of Zurich to secrets lurking beneath the Atlantic.

A fellow ace friend gave me this book for my birthday. I was jazzed as it'd been on my to-read list ever since I heard about it through one of bookstagram's ace books lists. I haven't read the first one, which I think is about Monty (the brother) getting together with his boyfriend. You don't really need to have read it to get the sequel, but it does occasionally reference the trio's misadventures in the previous book. I can't stand reading series books out of order, but since this was a gift, I didn't want to wait too long. 

To say Felicity dreams of being a doctor would be an understatement. She eats, sleeps, and breathes medicine. She is actually in Edinburgh because at the time (the 1700s, date unspecified), it was the medical science capital of the world (Europe). Obviously she is refused at every medical school due to sexism, but she won't give up. She decides to crash the wedding of her doctor hero on the tenuous grounds that she was best friends with the bride, Johanna, when they were children (tenuous because she wasn't invited and they had a friend breakup a few years ago). She hopes she can talk her way into being tutored by him or being his assistant. The mysterious woman who pretends to be her servant is Sim, a badass Algerian piratess who kickstarts the dangerous and scientific adventure that she, Felicity and Johanna go on. 

I mostly liked Felicity, and would categorize her as aroace because she had no interest in romance, either with men or women. (I'm sensing a theme.) She did kind of feel like the classic Modern Feminist Heroine in an unmodern setting (you know, the type who refuses to wear corsets or marry without love but in a really modern way), and it amused me to read in the afterword that the author had specifically been trying to avoid this trope. Sorry, sister. I ended up liking Johanna way more than I thought I would, since she's kind of Felicity's girly opposite. I liked the girls teaming up and how Felicity gets to flex her medical skills.

THIS IS THE PART OF THE REVIEW WHERE I TALK ABOUT SPOILERS

Felicity's "there is only one right way to be an intelligent/scholarly/scientific woman" shtick annoyed me. She looked down on Johanna because she was into girly stuff like dresses and parties and boys, and that's what led to their friendship breakdown. It's rather "I'm not like other girls". I kept waiting for someone to point out to Felicity that no matter how plainly, practically and unfashionably she dressed, men would never take her seriously, but no one ever did. When she meets up with Johanna and realizes how well she still knows her and the importance their friendship had to her, that really tugged my heartstrings and made me miss my ex-best friend. I'm glad the girls become friends again.

A massively hearty F U to the doctor guy for all the shit he put the girls through. He sucks. He does get a comeuppance but not so much what he deserves.

Oh, the scientific mystery? It's sea dragons. SEA DRAGONS!! They have iridescent blue scales that make you high when you ingest them. Naturally they are being hunted to extinction. I wish they were real. We do have sea dragons, but they are like this and not like this.

I would walk the plank for Sim. She's so into Felicity, although of course Felicity is not, and flirts with her, calling her a rare wildflower men would walk the whole earth to find (swoon). DUMP FELICITY MARRY ME

END SPOILERS I GUESS, EXCEPT OF COURSE FOR THE TRIGGER WARNINGS

Overall I really liked this book and want to read the others (although Monty sounds kind of annoying). *~Friendship and science!~* 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: November 3
From: bday gift from a friend
Status: keeping tentatively

Cover notes: I like this cover. The illustrated doodles are fun. However, Felicity's hair seems to be pinned up (the book is very clear about her always having her hair back in a braid), and, most damning of all, she seems to be wearing an Edwardian dress! (It could be an atypical Victorian dress bodice, I guess, but there's no skirt volume. Either way that's way too late.) Sigh.

Trigger warnings: physical abuse of child and teens, abusive parent, teenage girl coerced into marrying adult man, man threatens to shoot dog to force girl to marry him, teenage girls imprisoned/tied up by adult men, underage alcoholism, underage alcohol abuse, homophobia mentions, substance addiction, addict is villain who does bad things, drugs (snuff), animal cruelty, animal/fish death (fishing/hunting), medical gore, blood, period-typical sexism, poison, character nearly dies from being poisoned, parental abandonment of child, illness mentions, homelessness mentions

Book Review: Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever.

In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.

But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It's a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.

But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston's School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose.

But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. 

And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.

I read this book for Halloween, as it has zombies. This one was purchased from the thrift store a while back. Bookstagram informed me that a side character is ace, which made me happy. Part of the reason I picked this book above my other spooky reads was because I wasn't ready to let Ace Week go. 

Anyway, WHEW THIS BOOK. It was so gory and horrifying and suspenseful and amazing. While it does take place in an alternate timeline, the racism and inequality of the Reconstruction South feels like it rang true (obviously I was not alive then but I'm guessing it was like that). It's really saying something when the racism is scarier than the zombies. The zombies themselves are pretty standard; the only unique qualities are that their eyes turn yellow, and the newly turned are faster and stronger than the longer-undead ones. I don't consume a lot of zombie media, but that was new to me. There was a line in the book about white people claiming certain people of color had been bitten in order to enslave them, in an echo of the 13th amendment loophole. There were parts of this that were hard to read and very sad (zombies attacking children etc., the kind of racism that you already know to expect).

I liked Jane, although I found her impulsivity and inability to keep her mouth shut annoying. You'd think a Black girl raised in the mid- to late-1800s would know when not to mouth off, even if she was raised by a white mother who coddled her and didn't believe in corporate punishment for Black workers. She was pretty badass though. Katherine, Jane's classmate in the finishing school, begins as an annoying tattling prig, but due to circumstances that bring them together, grows on Jane and us. She's the ace character, and due to her lack of interest in relationships, I read her as aroace. There's a fun surprise as to another character's LGBTQ+ identity. There's also a Black smoothtalking conman and nice white scientist for Jane to have sparks with. One of the more interesting characters was Mr. Redfern, a Native American badass and morally gray character who is only in the first half of the book. I hope we see him again in the sequel, which I can't wait to read. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: October 31
From: Savers thrift store
Status: giving away eventually

Cover notes: I really like this cover. "Jane" with her sickles in front of the American flag? Perfection. My only quibble is that she seems to be wearing an Edwardian dress and the book clearly takes place in 1880 or so.

Trigger warnings: murder, gore, zombies attacking/eating children and other people, attempted murder of infant, attempted murder of child, attempted drowning of child by adult, white supremacy, racism, death/murder by shooting (multiple instances), racial slurs, violence, Black character struck and flogged by white men, use of Black servant as zombie bait in medical experiment, police brutality, evil sheriff character, starvation, enforced hunger, imprisonment, internalized white supremacy in Black characters who betray their own, the Bible/religion/Christianity used to support racism, segregation and slavery; corrupt preacher character, sexism, misogynoir, whorephobia (prejudice against sex workers)

Book Review: A-Okay by Jarad Greene

When Jay starts eighth grade with a few pimples he doesn’t think much of it at first…except to wonder if the embarrassing acne will disappear as quickly as it arrived. But when his acne goes from bad to worse, Jay’s prescribed a powerful medication that comes with some serious side effects. Regardless, he’s convinced it’ll all be worth it if clear skin is on the horizon!

Meanwhile, school isn’t going exactly as planned. All of Jay’s friends are in different classes; he has no one to sit with at lunch; his best friend, Brace, is avoiding him; and—to top it off—Jay doesn’t understand why he doesn’t share the same feelings two of his fellow classmates, a boy named Mark and a girl named Amy, have for him. 

Eighth grade can be tough, but Jay has to believe everything’s going to be a-okay…right?

I bought this book from (you guessed it) Book Outlet as part of my quest to own every book about asexuality. I rarely read graphic novels or middle grade books, especially ones about boys, so this is a departure from my usual reading. I wanted something low-stakes and fun/easy after the last book I read. Also, this is my first ace read for Asexual Awareness Month.

This book is heavily based on the authors' experiences with developing bad acne at a late/r age. Jay/Jarad had perfect skin before getting bad acne, which led to being teased for being a "porcelain doll" (a compliment I've often received. I guess it's an insult for boys). Jay has low self-esteem due to his skin issues and tries developing a fashion style to make up for it. Besides his skin, Jay's main concern is that his class schedule keeps him apart from his 7th grade friends, who all seem to be ditching him for new friend groups. Jay struggles with making new friends, a rigorous skincare routine, medication side effects and monthly blood draws to make sure the Accutane isn't damaging his liver. It bothered me that Jay's dad didn't bother to try making his food low-fat, despite the dermatologist specifically telling Jay to eat a low-fat diet due to his medication. I also didn't like how his parents were dismissive and discouraging of Jay's desire to study art. They weren't cruel about it, but it still rubbed me the wrong way.

My brother also took Accutane for his acne. My siblings all had pretty bad acne but I don't remember if the younger two were put on it as well. Accutane really sucks to take; I remember my brother having to wear a hat and stay out of the sun. I actually think it impacted his joints negatively, if memory serves. Due to my developmental issues, I never had to worry about acne; I still mostly don't as long as I wash my face and change my pillowcase regularly. I did once have a very bad allergic reaction that left my face very dry, itchy, painful and leprous-looking for what felt like years, so I know what it's like to have perfect skin you take for granted until it's gone. It really does fork up your self-esteem. This was several years before the pandemic so I couldn't even hide behind face masks. I used to get looks like I was diseased. Most people would tell you my skin is flawless today, but I know it's not the same. That perfect skin I used to have is gone forever. 

Jay's asexuality is not dwelled on very much. Two of his friends have crushes on him and ask him out, but he doesn't have feelings for either of them. Jay's lack of crushes puts him at odds with his fellow middle-schoolers, as you can imagine. Mark, one of said crushing friends, casually calls him an ace, and Jay goes home and googles what it means, thus learning about asexuality. His aceness is briefly mentioned a few times more in the book but doesn't really come up past that, which disappointed me a bit. Jay accepted his asexuality immediately, happy to have a word for what he is. I would have liked to see more about him dealing with that and maybe discussing it with Mark. That said, I'm really glad this book exists; now middle grade kids are going to learn what asexuality is instead of not hearing about it until adulthood like me and a lot of other aces (including the author). Another thing I will say is that this book seems to conflate asexuality with aromanticism, which are two separate things. Jay doesn't have any romantic feelings, which to me makes him aromantic as well as asexual, but the book's only mention of aromanticism is one word, aromantic, shown in Jay's googling. I'm ace but I got crushes all the time, even in middle school.

I enjoyed this book, even though it delved into eighth grade life and worries and that's well over half my life ago. I was kind of disappointed when the book ended; I wouldn't mind reading a sequel that follows Jay into high school. I'd also be interested in seeing how he deals with being aroace then. I would recommend this book to the target audience and anyone who has ever dealt with anything Jay deals with. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: October 20
From: Book Outlet
Status: tentatively keeping

Trigger warnings: needles/blood drawing, including in the face (no blood shown); some bullying, teasing, mocking; low self-esteem, anxiety, friend rejection, friend estrangement, parents dismissive of Jay's desire to study art

Book Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.

As you know, I'm reading solely Hispanic/Latine books for Hispanic Heritage Month. This one had been on my radar ever since it blew up in the late 2000s. I bought it from a thrift store a few years ago and I hadn't read it until now. The thing about non-children's (and even some children's) Latine books is that I know they're going to talk about sad and hard things, because the reason we're Latin America is because of colonization and all the hard things that entails. There isn't a single LatAm country that isn't still feeling the effect of colonization. Diaz realizes this, and the narrator realizes this, and so we are told not just Oscar's story, not just his family's story, but the Dominican Republic's story, including the long shadow of Trujillo. Oscar and his family's stories are impossible to tell apart from that. 

For this book ostensibly being about Oscar's life, we don't dwell on it much. Oscar grew up steeped in machismo and was a pint-size Casanova until he got his heart broken when he was 7. He discovered science fiction and fantasy soon afterward, and became the kind of geek who says "hail and well met" unironically to obviously non-geeky people. Oscar's weight gain, desperation, depression, low self esteem, not being able to see women as people, and heavy incel energy keep him from finding love or getting laid. Like the narrator, Oscar's roommate Yunior, you want to shake him by the shoulders. Snap out of it! It is difficult to understand an undateable person's despair and loneliness if you have not experienced it yourself. We are told nearly from the beginning that Oscar dies young. It is not from his suicide attempt, but being murdered after falling in love with a taken woman.

Oscar's sister Lola is a Dominican goth and the only daughter, which should give you a window into her suffering. Her mother is incredibly cruel to her, and she rebels by cutting out the criada stuff and then running away. She's the nicest to Oscar, and has a short thing with Yunior at one point. I felt for her, as hers was not an easy life. I know she's not real but I really want her to be happy. She ends up with a husband and kids, but we don't learn about them.

Beli is Oscar & Lola's mother, and her life is harder than her children's put together. Her family is assassinated by Trujillo's people for a minor reason, and she's basically a slave as a small child until her father's distant cousin adopts her and acts as her mother and as Lola & Oscar's grandmother. Beli becomes very attractive and curvaceous during puberty, incurring lots of male attention, including that of a married gangster she falls in love with. His wife has her beaten in the same cane fields her son will be beaten and killed in years later, but she's saved by a guardian spirit mongoose. She's sent to the US to escape, and meets her husband and has her children there. She gets breast cancer later, but outlives her son. She loves her children, but her hardships made her a hard person.

The writing in this book is superb, lyrical and slang-y and conversational. There's a lot of Spanglish and untranslated Spanish words, so I feel like you can't really get this book if you don't speak Spanish. There's probably stuff I didn't get because I'm not Dominican. This book has a lot of footnotes, especially in the beginning. I like footnotes so I don't mind this. There's constant N-word use, which seems to be part of Dominican American slang (used the way I use 'dude'). There's also mention of racism against Haitians (which is wild to me because they're both on the same fucking island. How are you going to hate your sibling-neighbors.). While it was difficult to read, this book was just so interesting and well-written that I couldn't put it down. I literally read it at work instead of working, which I never do. This book's Wikipedia page has a good breakdown of the themes, motifs and parallels in the stories. I learned a lot about Dominican history and the Trujillo regime, which I hadn't known much about.

I want to talk about the misogyny in this book. Obviously there's a ton of machismo in Latin American countries and culture (reminder: I am latina). Oscar gets tons of praise for being a womanizer in 2nd grade or whatever, and he has an inability to see women as whole people, putting them on a pedestal and getting disappointed when they don't fall in love with him even though he's there. I've mentioned the incel energy, although Oscar doesn't feel like he's owed sex or romance and doesn't hate women. He does have a tendency to stalk them and ignore boundaries. Just about every female character, no matter how glancingly mentioned, has her body and looks discussed in a very specific and objectifying way. Yunior is a cheating womanizer and definitely sees women as objects. He's very flippant about the fact that Trujillo raped whoever he wanted. Both he and Oscar are deeply influenced by the machismo of their culture and upbringing. There's also rape culture, sexual assault, and a lot of talk of very young girls dating (being groomed/statutory raped by) much older men. For example, Beli is 14 or 15 when she gets together with the middle-aged gangster. This was very difficult to read. Junot Diaz has been accused of past sexual assault and sexism. I considered not reading this book, but I felt that I might identify with Oscar (I kind of did). You'll have to make the decision to read this book yourself. 

Trigger warnings: rape and sexual assault, child abuse, murder, characters beaten to death, suicide attempt, grooming, domestic abuse, assassinations, police brutality, misogyny, objectification of women and girls, miscarriage mentions, racism, colorism, genocide mentions, stalking, explicit sex, sexism, slavery (including child slavery), domestic slavery, gun violence, alcohol abuse, whorephobia, infidelity

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: October 5
From: thrift store
Status: giving away/selling

Book Review: Miss Meteor by Tehlor Kay Mejia & Anna-Marie McLemore

There hasn’t been a winner of the Miss Meteor beauty pageant who looks like Lita Perez or Chicky Quintanilla in all its history.

But that’s not the only reason Lita wants to enter the contest, or her ex-best friend Chicky wants to help her. The road to becoming Miss Meteor isn’t about being perfect; it’s about sharing who you are with the world—and loving the parts of yourself no one else understands.

So to pull off the unlikeliest underdog story in pageant history, Lita and Chicky are going to have to forget the past and imagine a future where girls like them are more than enough—they are everything.

I bought this book because it sounded cute, and I'm always here for Latine and LGBTQ+ rep. While each author writes for each girl (I'm assuming), the book sounded cohesive and kinda like it had been written by just one person. TBH, I was too engrossed in the story to stop and think about that sort of thing. 

Lita (Estrellita) is a sweet and petite sensitive soul who makes friends with cacti and helps her "aunt" with her brujeria (positive). She's kind of a mini pixie dream girl (get it? cuz she's short and quirky) who wears what she wants and rides a little girl's bike. This might be a spoiler, as it's not mentioned in the back of book summary, but it is mentioned within the first three chapters: Lita and Bruja Lupe arrived with the meteor; they are literally extraterrestrial stardust that was launched from the meteor/ite and somehow formed itself into two "human" beings. How it happened and why is not explained; it's very magical realism, although that's the only magical thing in the book. Lita decides to win the Miss Meteor pageant even though she's short, chubby, brown, and knows nothing about beauty pageants. Knowing this, she calls on Chicky and her MM pageant-veteran sisters to help her enter and win the pageant. Craziness ensues, obviously.

Chicky (Chiquita) is an androgynous loner who hides behind her self-cut bangs and sticks out like a sore thumb from her four older hyper-femme sisters as well as their traditional town. The Quintanillas run a really sweet-sounding diner called Selena's (Selena has the same last name as them) that I wish I could eat at. Chicky and Lita used to be best friends when they were younger, until the white popular mean kids' bullying drove them apart. While this is not important to the story, it sticks in my craw: each Quintanilla girl is named after what their great-grandmother dreamed about before they were born. For some ungodly reason, bisabuela dreamed of a different fruit each time, except that with the last one, she dreamed of Chiquita Banana. The older Quintanilla girls are out here named shit like Fresa and Uva. Literally why. This was mad cringy, in my opinion. Why not something normal yet unnecessarily feminine like flowers? Or even gemstones?

Meteor, New Mexico is just as much a character as the girls, with its quirky small-town-ness and yearly cornhole competition-slash-Miss Meteor pageant. The girls' love of their hometown is so strong that you come to love it too. That said, there's a lot of ridiculous racism and homophobia that they have to deal with. Lita gets racist/colorist/sizeist bullying; Chicky gets homophobic bullying. The popular mean girl and guy who bully them the most sadly do not get hit by a car, nor do their racist parents get hit with a train. Alas. There is some comeuppance for them at the end, but not enough. Also, I think it's weird that Miss Meteor is always a white girl. We're literally talking about small towns in New Mexico, which are mostly made up of latines? Hello? Why did no one call out the (undoubtedly white and more well-off) judges for only choosing white girls from the same families each time?

Both girls get love interests, obvi. Chicky surprisingly does not get a female love interest, but a male one: she's pansexual. Junior is an artist and a longtime friend of Chicky's who has always liked her, and she has to overcome her fear of ruining their friendship and truly being seen. Lita's love interest is Cole, a trans guy who is the brother of the main bully girl (yikes). He's also a longtime friend, and Lita has to get over her insecurity about not belonging and challenging the status quo (he's popular, she's not). The romances were cute, and I liked both guys, although I feel like we focus on Junior less than we do on Cole. Cole was honestly my favorite character besides the main girls.

Anyway I liked this book so much! It gave me such a good feeling at the end. I loved the girls and their love interests and their crazy families and the town. God I wish I could eat at Selena's. I definitely recommend the book for its representation and themes. A note: this book was promoted on bookstagram (bookish Instagram) as having bisexual rep, when it actually has pansexual rep. I saw so many posts and videos touting it as bi rep that I wonder if maybe Chicky was originally written to be bi, and the publisher promoted it as such. This is rather irritating because I trusted the posts I saw and read this book for Bisexual Awareness Week, and it wasn't bi. Once again I am deceived. 

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: September 21-22
From: Book Outlet
Status: keeping

Cover notes: I love this cover. The girls' pictures, the cacti, the roses, the beauty stuff, the colors. The cupcake with sliced jalapeños on top is Lita's regular order at Selena's. *affectionately* Gross.

Trigger warnings for this book: homophobic bullying, racist bullying, internalized homophobia, anti-immigrant and anti-latine racism, transphobia, transphobic microaggressions, bullying, underage drinking, underage drunkenness, alcohol, sexism, body shaming, sizeism, fatphobia, internalized fatphobia, internalized sizeism, broken bone(s) from accident, classism, rich people making fun of poor people, bike crash, growing up poor, tokenism, false 'allyship'

Book Review: Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

I love Jules Verne, his 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea being a childhood favorite of mine, but I hadn't read this book of his. The copy I read belonged to my brother, or at least had ended up in his room. I grabbed this one to read on the plane to New York to visit my sister and her family, so that I could leave it behind if I wanted to. Back of book summary:

In Verne’s science-fiction classic, Professor Lidenbrock chances upon an ancient manuscript and pledges to solve the mysterious coded message that lies within it. Eventually he deciphers the story – that of an Icelandic explorer who travels to the centre of the earth, finding his way there via a volcano.

Inspired by the manuscript, the Professor is determined to follow in the explorer’s footsteps and builds a crew of men which includes his nervous nephew Axel. Together they begin their journey to the centre of the earth, facing fearsome danger and adventure at every turn.

I didn't enjoy this one as much as 2LUtS, or even Around the World in 80 Days. It was definitely an enjoyable way to pass the time in an airport, but I found the story somewhat lacking somehow. Maybe it's the cringing, scaredycat narrator, the way everything is described in the same tone of fearful amazement regardless of whether it's interesting or important to the story, or maybe it's the unchanging rigidity of the characters, maybe it's the silly science, ridiculous even to me with my one (1) college geology class.

Professor Lindbrock is an incredibly rigid, stubborn, egotistical, self-centered man. He lost my respect within the first 2 or 3 chapters when he forced the whole household, including his servants, to go without eating for over a day because he had decided to not eat or sleep until he cracked the manuscript. He literally locked them all into the house and took the key, so the cook couldn't leave and go to the market for the day's meals!! He ignored his nephew's trepidation about the accuracy of his science and the danger of the trip, strong-arming him into going and even forcing him to endure vertigo by repeatedly dragging him to the top of a tower (supposedly to get him used to great heights). Just because Lidenbrock decided something, it was right and everyone else was wrong and not worth listening to. He never got any comeuppance for being such a jerk, although he did almost lose Axel a couple of times and was therefore forced to come to terms with his actions, in a way. 0/10 uncle and person.

Axel is the narrator, and I found him quite annoying. Like I said, he's fearful and can't stand up to his uncle. Lindbrock was only able to crack the code because of Axel, who figured out the cryptogram. Axel is in love with Lindbrock's ward Grauben (forgot to say, they're all German for some reason), which weirded me out because Axel rhapsodizes about her youth and beauty in a truly Victorian creepy way, and I'm not sure how old he's supposed to be. I think he's a university student, and Grauben is 16. Another edition of J2tCotE gives Axel's age as 16, but I don't think it's mentioned in the book. I'm guessing he's 17-18 years old, which I guess is why he's such a scaredycat and won't stand up to his uncle. I'm guessing the romance was there to give him interest (he's otherwise very boring), but it served no purpose. 

Hans Bjelke is their Icelandic guide, who makes his living as an eiderdown collector (okay.). He communicates in Danish to Lidenbrock and is very taciturn and non-emotional, even when they're in great danger. He goes along with whatever Lidenbrock wants in what Axel describes as a feudal way, even when they could all die. Since he and Axel can't communicate, we never hear his side of things, and he's a very flat character. 

Ok, what I liked about this book: I thought them finding living prehistoric plants and creatures and even an early man (?!) was cool. I liked the chapters where they were trying to translate the Icelandic runes and break the code so they could read the ancient manuscript (you all know how I feel about runes and manuscripts and cryptograms). I liked their travels through Europe, despite the classist attitude towards peasants and rural people. There was one part when Axel (who doesn't speak any Scandinavian languages) finally meets one person he can talk to: some scholarly guy who also knows Latin. The underground travels stuff was interesting and suspenseful, even if the science is silly and they're saved by Deus ex volcano. How did they not die from that? It's silly.

Like I said, this whiled away the time in an agreeable way, but it's not my favorite of Verne's books. I do recommend reading it if you like Victorian sci fi and want to read a classic book to pass the time. 

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: August 16-September 8
From: my brother's room
Status: left it at my parents' house

Cover notes: This is clearly some stock picture of a person exploring an ice cave. Pretty, but not very accurate.

Trigger warnings for this book: being lost underground/in a cave without light, nearly drowning, being deep under the ground in caves, nearly dying of thirst, extreme thirst, anxious character forced to do the things he's afraid of, acrophobia (fear of heights), claustrophobia, thalassophobia (fear of deep water), vertigo mentions, controlling parental/father figure, adult man deprives teen/young adult of food for a day, rich/landowning man deprives servant(s) of food for a day (power imbalance), controlling man locks others inside his house, creepy descriptions of teen girl and narrator's attraction to her, fetishized female youth and innocence, teenage girl simultaneously infantilized and romanticized

Book Review: Cuentos: Tales From the Hispanic Southwest

I was thrilled to find this book at my thrift store, as I am not very familiar with Latinx folklore the way I am with other cultures' stories. Back of book summary below:

Witchcraft and magic and the events of everyday life in the Hispanic villages of New Mexico and southern Colorado flow through this collection of cuentos. Together the tales evoke the rich tradition--the wisdom, customs and values--of the early Spanish Settlers and their descendants.

What this doesn't say, and what the compilers/translators emphasize, is that it's not just the Spanish heritage; it's all of the cultures in the Southwest who are combined in the people and in their stories: Spanish, Mexican, and Native American. You see Mexican Spanish words derived from Aztec used (tecolote, zacate), Native American terms (tata/tatita), as well as terms that are clearly from the local dialect of the time (asina for asi). This is fascinating from a linguistic standpoint, and I recommend those studying Spanish and/or Latin American dialects to read this book. There is a glossary in the back for some of the different terms, which of course I did not find out until I was almost at the end. 

Each tale is told in both Spanish and English, with the Spanish on the left page and English on the right; this makes it a bit annoying to read. I struggled through the Spanish parts because of the archaic terms and dialectal differences, and also because my Spanish reading level never improved past elementary school. I'd say I understood anywhere from 80-99% of the text. The English translations definitely took liberties with the source material. I understand that good translations capture the spirit of the text rather than translating just the specific words directly, but there were way too many changes, many of which didn't make sense. Some changes I could see, as the original tales took it for granted that everyone would automatically know everything referenced in the story, but some things were expanded on in an unnecessary way. Some translation choices actually changed the connotation or story. Some examples: one cuento mentions a somewhat conniving Jewish jeweler, while the English translation doesn't mention he's Jewish at all (because of the antisemitism? This was published in 1980; were people that concerned about antisemitism then? Wouldn't it be the correct thing to leave the antisemitism in?). Another cuento mentions women turning into owls; the English text calls them old women. Yet others ascribed emotions, actions or descriptions to characters etc. that weren't present in the original text. It's just so irresponsible. These are learned writers who should know what they're doing! Bad translations are one of my pet peeves.

You may notice that I didn't include an author; this is because it's a bit muddled. The subtitle states that Juan B. Rael originally collected these oral folktales from Colorado and New Mexico, and Jose Griego & Maestas compiled and adapted them for this book, while Rudolfo A. Anaya (author of Bless Me, Ultima!) is the one who made the English translations. Of course, it's basically impossible to know the sources/authors of these stories, as with oral tradition, each teller can add their own details in every telling.

Some of the stories are very short and are almost like longish jokes with punchlines. These often poke fun of or criticize corrupt priests or selfish rich men. Simple indio/Native American characters often get back at these. Christian and Catholic personages like Jesus, the Virgin Mary, St. Peter, and God often show up and are depicted as characters, sometimes acting human. Death also shows up a lot. I learned there are different versions of death, not just the one skeleton with a scythe. One is called manita muerte, short for little sister (hermanita) death. Some of the stories are unsurprisingly moralistic and Catholic/Christian; others involve people getting rich. These reminded me of fairytales I've read, because of the formerly oral feel and moralistic/getting rich themes. There's one about a guy who saves a snake and is awarded the ability to talk to animals and consequently finds money and gets rich that, apart from the setting and language, could have come from Grimm's (the introduction says it's from the 1001 Arabian Nights, which, fascinating). Instead of the familiar "habia una vez.." beginning, these all begin very plainly with "Habia..." or "Esta era un hombre...", which I found interesting. Almost all of these stories have male protagonists; the only one who kinda has a female protagonist is about a shapeshifting witch who's bested by a man.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and am glad I bought it. I think I'm keeping it, although I'm lending it to my dad next so it might end up at my parents' house. I like learning more about Latinx literary culture. 

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: July 24-August 31
From: Savers thrift store
Status: keeping for now

Cover notes: The cover depicts art from the same artist who drew the inside illustrations. I think it's fine. Death never flies over anyone's house in any of the stories, although they are featured quite often.

Trigger warnings for this book: elder abuse and neglect, child abuse and neglect mentions, anti-indigenous racism, period-typical sexism, gambling addiction, fantasy violence, death, Christianity and Catholicism, church and clergy corruption, thievery, witchcraft, can't think of anything else but if you've read fairy tales and folklore from the 1800s then you know the vibe

Book Review: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

I got this one from the thrift store. This book and its subsequent movie have been pretty famous, so I decided to see what it's all about. Book summary:

Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he's pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he's never met.

This book was good, with real-feeling, relatable teen characters and a cute romance. Simon has an anonymous email correspondence with another closeted gay guy in his high school (they use pen names), and they flirt and fall in love through emails. I am a jaded crone and I still found their conversations and romance to be really cute and properly swoony. Simon forgets to log out of the school computer, and this absolute blister classmate, Marty, sees his logged-in email and blackmails Simon: help Marty get together with Simon's friend Abby, or he'll out Simon. Simon has to try to satisfy Marty, avoid betraying Abby, deal with the tension within his friend group, and learn the blocking for the school play, all while falling in love with Blue (the email guy) and trying to figure out who he is. 

SPOILERY PARAGRAPHS AHEAD

Simon is outed, of course, on the school's secrets tumblr (oh man, remember those? This book was published in 2015). Marty, angry that Abby doesn't like him (duh, he has rancid vibes) anonymously submits a profane, homophobic tirade "from"/about Simon. Simon has to deal with homophobic insults and bullying (nothing physical) at school, as well as people gossiping about him. Luckily some boys are sent to the principal after making sexually suggestive comments/actions about Simon, and the drama teacher stands up for him. Simon comes out to his family because of Marty's actions, and they're supportive. There's a hilarious part where his BFF Nick goes to sleep over at Simon's, and Simon's parents are like "keep the door cracked open" bc Nick's a boy and Simon's like "MOOOM!!! It's not like that!!"

I didn't like the way Simon's friend Leah treated him and their other friends: she was jealous and resentful of Abby for being pretty and popular and skinny, and because Nick liked Abby instead of her. She was obviously hurting, but she made her best friends feel like they had to walk on eggshells around her, and she took out her emotions on them/blamed them for her emotions too much. Leah gets her own book later, and I think it's revealed that she's bi, so I feel like part of the thing with Abby is that she also has a crush on her. That's my hypothesis, anyway. I loved her secretly being in a band and playing the drums.

I liked Abby, but I think it was a bit self-centered of her to be irritated with Simon when she found out about the blackmailing, saying he should have told her since she's not a prize to be won, etc. She's right, but she doesn't understand the level of fear a closeted teen has, and how terrified they are of others finding out, and of the severity of Marty's action. Abby does come to her senses about that later and apologizes to Simon.

There's a scene where Simon, Nick and Abby drive to Atlanta and go to a gay-friendly restaurant, where Simon is immediately adopted by some adult gay guys and plied with alcohol until they realize he's not a college student, getting him hammered. I'm not sure if I was supposed to see it as funny, and while I understood how great it felt for Simon to be around his people, this scene was very anxiety-inducing for me. To their credit, the gay guys immediately deposited Simon back to his friends' table once they found out he was in high school, with the very sweet line "go be seventeen, sweet Simon", but WHY didn't they make sure he was 21 or at least 18 before loading him up with alcohol? It made me very angry with them, and worried for Simon. To their credit, when Simon's parents find out he's drunk, they have a talk with him and ground him.

Marty does get some comeuppance, thankfully. Obviously Abby rejects him, and Simon tells him exactly how his actions made him feel in a very cathartic monologue to read ("you took that [coming out in his own time] away from me!"). Marty's older brother, who is gay, finds out what he did and reads him the riot act off-page. Good.

Some reviewers have said there's not enough conflict or real fear for Simon, but I think there's plenty. There were plenty of jerks at his school being homophobic to him, and he didn't know for sure that his parents would accept him, or to what degree. The setting is in the suburbs (I think) of Atlanta, so it's not super homophobic as the rest of Georgia. Blue turns out to be a cute sportsball player, and isn't that the dream for gay teen boys? To end up with a cute jock who's also sensitive and smart? Good for him. 

END SPOILERS I GUESS

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to people who like YA and LGBTQ+ books about coming out. Becky Albertalli writes really well, and I think it sucks that she was basically forced to come out because people on the internet have no sense of boundaries or privacy, and hounded her for daring to write a gay character as a "straight" author. That is not how Own Voices is supposed to work. Sorry for ending this review with a bummer. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: June 30
From: Savers thrift store
Status: keeping for now because I need it for next year's pride rainbow book stack

Cover notes: I like the cover ok. Simon's being headless suggests he's holding back, not showing all of himself. Not sure why the title says "homo sapiens agenda" when it's never discussed. 

Trigger warnings for this book: homophobic bullying (non-physically violent) and mocking, teen is forcibly outed, teen is blackmailed about his sexuality, homophobia, adults ply teen boy with alcohol and get him drunk (not knowing he's a teen), underage drinking, sexism re: the Abby thing, internalized fatphobia (Leah), low self-esteem (Leah), mildly suggestive flirty talk between teen boys, masturbation mentions. I can't remember if any slurs are used. Simon's school has Spirit week which includes Cross-Dressing Day, which is probably transphobic

Book Review: Super Adjacent by Crystal Cestari

I bought this one from Book Outlet because it seemed light and fun and sapphic. I was right about the last part. Book summary:

Claire has always wanted to work with superheroes, from collecting Warrior Nation cards as a kid to drafting "What to Say to a Hero" speeches in her diary. Now that she's landed a coveted internship with the Chicago branch of Warrior Nation, Claire is ready to prove she belongs, super or not. But complicating plans is the newest WarNat hero, Girl Power (aka Joy), who happens to be egotistical and self-important... and pretty adorable.
 
Bridgette, meanwhile, wants out of WarNat. After years of dating the famous Vaporizer (aka Matt), she's sick of playing second, or third, or five-hundredth fiddle to all the people-in-peril in the city of Chicago. Of course, once Bridgette meets Claire—who's clearly in need of a mentor and wingman—giving up WarNat becomes slightly more complicated. It becomes a lot more complicated when Joy, Matt, and the rest of the heroes go missing, leaving only Claire and Bridgette to save the day.

The setting is an alternate universe Chicago where superheroes are real and are a cross between celebrities, public figures, and law enforcement. It's similar to Marvel/DC, except the celebrity angle is really pitched up (disclosure: I've only read a few comics). Each big city region gets four superheroes to protect it, and Warrior Nation is a national corporation/publicity machine/etc. The Chicago WarNat headquarters were really cool to read about; they were kind of like a cross between what I imagine the Avengers tower, CIA headquarters, and Google headquarters to be like. The worldbuilding was fleshed out, and the author's love for Chicago shows.

 Claire is obsessed with the superheroes and with Warrior Nation. Her diary mentioned in the book summary is actually a bulging super-scrapbook filled with files and information on all the superheroes and every aspect of WarNat. She's geeky and a little much with her superhero worship. While she initially thinks Joy is full of herself and used to getting her way due to her pretty girl privilege, it's a very short hate to love thing that quickly becomes them making out in WarNat headquarters broom closets. Their relationship is cute, if a bit first-love-cloying. I liked that the WarNat top brass made Claire the Girl Power advisor because she's young; there's a cool scene where she talks them out of making Girl Power wear a revealing sexy costume.

Bridgette's an old hand in WarNat, having dated Matt/Vaporizer for four years. Her part of the story shows the dark underside of superherodom and celebrity. Vaporizer's fangirls bash her online and, when they come across her in real life, scream into her face that her boyfriend can do better than her. She's called all sorts of horrible names, both online and in person. Also, she's in constant danger since Matt has no secret identity and everyone knows they're dating, so she's been kidnapped countless times, attacked in the street, had important public events ruined by mobbing fans and her boyfriend flying though glass windows. Matt often stands her up, and while it sometimes is to rescue a kidnapped girl, it's just as often to film a commercial for something. It was really sad to read about everything she went through, and I'm pretty sure she was only 18 or so. Bridgette deserved better. I liked that she was friends with the other superheroes' significant others, and they made a little "super-adjacent" club.

The summary makes it sound like Bridgette takes Claire under her wing, but in the story, Bridgette and Claire are thrown together because they're kidnapped by superpowered bad guys. Those baddies are the reason why the superheroes disappear, and WarNat is being all tight-lipped about it. With the help of smarmy assistant Teddy, Claire and Bridgette must find out the truth and save the superheroes.

This book was a fun read in the beginning and suspenseful in the middle and end. It really took a hard look at how difficult it must be to be the significant other or parent of a superhero. Much like professional athletes, the supers join Warrior Nation in part because of the huge paychecks, but their loved ones are constantly afraid they will be hurt or killed. The part where the superheroes go missing is harrowing to read about because of their families' and partners' grief and worry. This book isn't afraid to go dark, despite the cover and premise, and for that I respect it. In terms of the queer representation, there is no homophobia in the book. Claire is out, and while no mention is made of whether Joy is out, she does take her on dates in public and stuff, even after she's famous.

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: June 20-21
From: Book Outlet
Status: give away eventually

Cover notes: I like the hardcover (which I have) book's purple cover better than the paperback's blue cover. The font is fantastic; lightning bolts and hearts are the letter's holes and sometimes legs, which is perfect for the subject matter. The superheroes are on top of the word "Super", while the girls gaze up at their paramours: Claire lovingly and Bridget exasperatedly. I like that Claire is holding her notebook, but the paintbrushes Bridgette is holding aren't her medium (I don't like the splashes of paint on her jumper; if she did paint she would totally cover her regular cute clothes). Bridgette makes intricate paper sculptures; she doesn't paint. It's an important plot point in the book! They gave Claire red hair when it's said to be purple (with an undercut) in the book. This book cover is fairly neutral, if you're worried about being seen reading a gay book; it will appear to the casual cishet observer that Claire is gazing up at Girl Power in a hero worship way, not a gay way.

Trigger warnings for this book: teen girl is stalked and grossly touched/sniffed by creepy adult man, kidnapping, teen girl grabbed and has her hair set on fire by adult man, violence, misogyny, online trolling/hate directed at teen girl, a character's hand is broken (sound mentioned), blood, injuries, verbal abuse of teen girl by strangers, obsessive parasocial relationships with celebrities

Book Review: The Sullivan Sisters by Kathryn Ormsbee

I picked this book up at the Dollar Tree because of its pretty cover, which is in the ace colors. When I saw from a blurb on the back that Kathryn Ormsbee also wrote Tash Hearts Tolstoy, I immediately purchased it. Book summary:

Time changes things.

That painful fact of life couldn’t be truer for the Sullivan sisters. Once, they used to be close, sharing secrets inside homemade blanket castles. Now, life in the Sullivan house means closed doors and secrets left untold.

Fourteen-year-old Murphy, an aspiring magician, is shocked by the death of Siegfried, her pet turtle. Seventeen-year-old Claire is bound for better things than her Oregonian hometown—until she receives a crushing rejection from her dream college. And eighteen-year-old Eileen is nursing a growing addiction in the wake of life-altering news.

Then, days before Christmas, a letter arrives, informing the sisters of a dead uncle and an inheritance they knew nothing about. The news forces them to band together in the face of a sinister family mystery...and, possibly, murder.

The Sullivan Sisters is an unforgettable novel about the ghosts of the past, the power of connection, and the bonds of sisterhood.

So, I'm just going to say it: I was acebaited. I saw the ace-colored cover; I saw that Kathryn Ormsbee wrote Tash Hearts Tolstoy, one of the first ace YA books, and just assumed this book would have at least one asexual character as well. NOPE. I was tricked, deceived, bamboozled; I was acebaited. It should be illegal to have a book's cover be purple, white, grey and black if there are no ace characters! Kathryn and the colors led me astray. Disappointment. At least one main character, Claire, is gay. There are a couple other minor characters who are gay as well, and show Claire what her future can look like as a queer person in a small town.

Despite this, this book was good. It is very sad, what with the death of one parent and the physical/emotional neglect of the other, the family's financial difficulties and alienation from each other. The oldest girl, Eileen, is a teenage alcoholic reeling from the discovery of a family secret. Claire turns to magical thinking and a #girlboss YouTuber for the advice she's missing from her sister and mom. Murphy's desire to be a magician stems from the lack of attention she so desperately craves; she feels invisible. Murphy was probably a bit weaker as a character; she's 14 but feels 12. Even when I wanted to shake the girls, I cared about them and rooted for things to improve for them. 

I have less love for the mother. I can understand working so hard to pay off the father's medical debt, but she didn't have to emotionally withdraw as well. And it made no sense for her to refuse her oldest daughter's money, given their financial situation. She should have been on top of the situation and picked up on her daughters' struggles. Now that I think about it, the mom is totally depressed, but still. She's kind of the least-rounded character; we're mostly told stuff about her.

The story really picks up when Eileen decides to check out their dead uncle's house several towns away, begrudgingly allowing Claire along for gas money; Murphy stows away and surprises her older sisters halfway there. The mystery about their family is quite dark, with murder and abuse involved. It was very interesting and kept me guessing. The book has a happy ending, with the girls starting to get and choose what they want.

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: June 16
From: Dollar Tree
Status: give away eventually

Cover notes: I have already mentioned how acebaited I was by this cover. It really is quite lovely, although the girls don't look enough like how they're written.

Trigger warnings for this book: murder, blood, gore, parental abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, parental neglect, physical neglect, emotional neglect, maggots in food (including partially eaten food), alcoholism, teenage alcoholic, underage drinking, underage binge-drinking, drunk driving, teen drunk driving, death of parent (from cancer I think?), animal death, animal neglect, animal corpse carried around in tupperware, mention of smell from said corpse, hate mail with threats and slut-shaming, teenage pregnancy mention, poor family (economically disadvantaged), medical debt, bats, creepy doll (does nothing), nice sheriff character

Book Review: Upside Down by N.R. Walker

This book was highly recommended by ace bookstagram, which is where I first heard about it. One ace bookstagrammer I follow said it's her comfort read and that she reads it dozens of times a year! I had high hopes for this one. Book summary:

Jordan O’Neill isn’t a fan of labels, considering he has a few. Gay, geek, a librarian, socially awkward, a nervous rambler, an introvert, an outsider. The last thing he needs is one more. But he when he realises adding the label ‘asexual’ might explain a lot, it turns his world upside down.

Hennessy Lang moved to Surry Hills after splitting with his boyfriend. His being asexual had seen the end of a lot of his romances, but he’s determined to stay true to himself. Leaving his North Shore support group behind, he starts his own in Surry Hills, where he meets first-time-attendee Jordan.

A little bewildered and scared, but completely adorable, Hennessy is struck by this guy who’s trying to find where he belongs. Maybe Hennessy can convince Jordan that his world hasn’t been turned upside down at all, but maybe it’s now—for the first time in his life—the right way up.

It was definitely the fact that Jordan is a librarian that cinched it for me. Ace rep AND a librarian? Insta-buy. Jordan's librarianship seems to consist mostly of shelving, helping patrons, and gossiping with his lesbian BFF Merry (who works with him). That seems fair. I liked that Jordan suggested Hennessy hold the ace support group meetings in the library's meeting room, as that is such a librarian thing to do. Jordan's claim that he needs to wear a grey suit & button-up shirt every day, forcing him to accessorize solely with scarves and shoes, seems less likely. Public librarians typically dress anywhere from casual to business-y. You probably won't see a librarian in jeans, but I highly doubt you'll see one in a full business suit. Australia (where this book is set) does not strike me as an overly formal place. Merry wears the colorful twee librarian aesthetic, obvi.

This book is, naturally, very heavy with ace rep. It's always affirming to read a book with asexual characters, but this one is almost too heavy, with whole paragraphs sounding like they've been pulled from AVEN or an encyclopedia. This could be a good introductory read for people who best consume concepts from stories, but as a seasoned ace from the Graduate School of Tumblr, I got kind of impatient with the Asexuality 101 and 102 explanations. Both Hennessy and Jordan have had relationships end because they were ace, and Jordan felt like he was broken because he didn't want to have sex. The pain behind those occurrences felt real and grounded the story. I wish I had a local ace support group; that would be sweet.

To me, the characterization is the weakest point. Neither character really seems real; they just seem like a combination of various tropes, attributes and roles. Hennessy (SUCH a dumb name) is basically a perfect guy: he's really good-looking, really smart, really nice, very moral and a good friend. He's the encyclopedia entry-spouter. His awful name and cool job are the only interesting things about him. He's pretty boring. Jordan is Adorkable To The Max. He rambles CONSTANTLY, like the stupidest stuff no one in their right mind would say out loud. He truly sounds unhinged and is constantly drowning in anxiety to an unhealthy degree. His brain goes immediately to the worst-case scenario for the smallest things. He's also constantly blurting out Samuel L. Jackson's favorite word, very loudly, in the most inappropriate times. Merry truly deserves a medal for putting up with him. It would be exhausting to be his friend, let alone his significant other. I grew tired of his spiels very quickly and found them embarrassing and annoying rather than funny or cute. Jordan is supposed to be 26, but he sounds and acts much younger, like a teen baby gay. It irritated me that I was supposed to find this anxiety-ridden mess funny.

Jordan and Hennessy's relationship is kind of cute. They ride the same bus and are cute together, and the other commuters get emotionally involved in their relationship and ship them and give advice, which is kind of funny. Their dates are cute, and I want to go to the restaurants they visited because the food sounds amazing. Hennessy is constantly having to reassure Jordan due to his anxiety and low self-esteem. I found the climax of the plot irritating because it involved Jordan's anxiety and thinking-the-worst-ness and a lack of communication. There's also a poly secondary plot with some of their friends. The writing in this book felt very fanfiction-y, kind of juvenile, romance-focused and gush-y. To be fair, I have read amazing writing in fanfiction before, better than some published books I've read (like this one). The book was published in 2019 but feels like it takes place in the early 2010s for some reason.

Overall, I mostly liked this book and am glad I read it. I wish I'd had/read this book when I was an older teen, as I think I would haven enjoyed it more and gotten more from it. Other people hyped it up so much for me that I expected more and was kind of disappointed.

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: June 14-15
From: Book Shop dot org
Status: keep for now

Cover notes: This cover seems really late 2000s/early 2010s to me, with the dots and the partial faces and the zany font (which I do like). I think this cover is subtle enough, for those who are wary of reading gay books in public. The back cover does have the blurb though. I like how the asexual flag is on the top arrow of the  N of the title.

Trigger warnings for this book: acephobia, anxiety, panic attacks (I think),  homophobia mentions, character estranged from birth family, house break-in and theft mention, sex mentions, an interaction can be read as polyphobic, high on chemical fumes mentions, drunk amorous couple mention

Book Review: Ash by Malinda Lo

Spoilers throughout, since I'm incapable of talking about a book without saying them

Malinda Lo's books have at least tangentially been on my radar for a while because she writes a lot of fairytale retellings, and those are my favorites. I've never read anything by her, though, as I don't read a lot of YA these days (well, much less than I used to in my twenties). I got this one from Book Outlet, unsurprisingly. Book summary:

In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Their friendship, as delicate as a new bloom, reawakens Ash's capacity for love—and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.

Entrancing and empowering, Ash beautifully unfolds the connections between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

Everyone is familiar with the sadness of the Cinderella story: Cinderella's father is dead, or isn't around to defend/protect her from her wicked stepmother and stepsisters; said steps treat her cruelly and force her to be a servant; they don't let her go to the ball. But Ash is soaked with grief from beginning (we open on Ash's mother's funeral) to almost the end. Grief and a desire to escape is the constant throughout the story. An explanation is given for the stepmother forcing Ash to be a servant: Ash's father saddled the family with his debt when he died. The numbness from grief and depression explains why she stays and doesn't fight back. Ash does feel grief about her father's death, but it's more about losing the last bit of childhood safety and security that she had. If her grief for her father's death is a lake, her grief for her mother's death is the ocean.

The plot with Sidhean is interesting. You may have gathered from the name that the country this book is set in is based heavily on, or is a version of, medieval/renaissance Ireland (Ash's actual name is Aisling, pronounced ASH-ling). The fairies of this book and its stories are the dangerous, alluring fairies of Irish (and other) folklore. They spirit unsuspecting or enthralled humans away, steal babies and leave changelings, time in fairyland is different than time in the human world, and they are said to be found in the deep forest. Ash returns to the forest again and again for this reason. Her life is so miserable that she'd prefer to be taken by the fairies, and wonders if they took her mother. Ash's dynamic with Sidhean, who of course is gorgeous, alluring, and kind of creepy in his unhumaness, is very standard YA/sometimes adult fantasy romance. She is attracted to him, literally; she is drawn to him like a pin to a magnet. She continually asks him when he will take her away. She is SPOILER the one human Sidhean has ever fallen in love with, due to a curse. That Ash ends up with the huntress Kaisa instead is truly the funniest form of straightbating I've ever seen. I knew it was going to happen, but the way their dynamic is written made me question it, as the straight pairing really feels inevitable. END SPOILER

The dynamic with Kaisa is interesting. She's the King's Huntress, which is such a kickass title and job to have. Their relationship is a really slow-burn one, in contrast to the instant attraction to Sidhean. At first they just seem like friends. While Sidhean represents the deep, dangerous, and dark part of the forest, Kaisa is the normal, light-filled, nature part of the forest. Ash has been cooped up in the house and walked constantly in the dark of the forest, hoping to be taken, but Kaisa brings light into her life, offering her kindness and friendship to Ash. Kaisa teaches Ash to ride a horse. Ash goes to the royal hunt and the ball to see her. It may seem to most readers that less time and effort is spent on developing or depicting the relationship between Ash and Kaisa, that it lacks the spark that Ash and Sidhean have, but it's important that love is shown as not the flash of attraction, but as a quiet, steady thing you build together over time. 

I loved the little flashes of queerness in this book. It is of course very queer to feel as if one doesn't belong, to long for escape, and to be hated or abandoned by one's family, sadly. Read this article for a queer mini-analysis of Cinderella. The first time Ash feels seen after her parents' deaths and enslavement is when the huntress before Kaisa visits the manor Ash's stepfamily are guests at and smiles at and talks to her, telling her a fairytale and maybe winks at her? Ash feels alive and is a bit disappointed when the huntress leaves without looking at her again. Kaisa tells her a fairytale about a huntress and fairy queen falling in love (!) to gauge if Ash is queer. When at her stepmother's relative's house, the other servants convince her to sneak off with them to a bonfire costume party and give her a (boy's) page uniform to wear. Ash is struck at how transformed she is in male clothing, and she likes what she sees in the mirror. At the bonfire, she sees two women laughing and kissing. There is no homophobia in this universe, although heteronormativity exists. The prince still needs to marry a princess, and when Ash sees him, she wonders why her stepsisters would ever find him handsome (lol). I think today's teens would get too impatient with the lack of overt queerness (besides KAisha), as this book was published ten years ago. This was one of the first mainstream lesbian YA books, and one of the first with a happy ending. There is something healing about reading a lesbian/queer fairytale retelling, as fairytales are told to children from a young age, and are part of the indoctrination into heteronormativity. 

 My only quibble is that there is no comeuppance for the stepmother and bitchy stepsister (in keeping with other adaptations, one stepsister is nice-ish). I didn't want birds to peck their eyes out, but for Ash to stand up to them and tell them exactly how she felt about them treating her like that would have been nice. She just leaves without saying anything. Anyway, I really liked this book and am glad I bought and read it. Lo's writing is just lovely and brings to mind Robin McKinley and Patricia M. Wrede. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: June 7-8
From: Book Outlet
Status: keep

Cover notes: A typical example of the YA fairytale retelling from the 2000s. The girl (who appears to be Asian, like Lo, even though Ash/Aisling is probably Irish) is posed in a way that recalls Ash lying down on her mother's grave. She was wearing clothes over the corset & petticoats, though.

Trigger warnings for this book:  child abuse, (step)parental abuse, child enslavement, domestic slavery, physical abuse of child/teen, child and young adult locked in cellar, controlling and isolation of child/teen/young adult, immortal adult fairy man could be seen as grooming young human teen girl, death, grief, girl threatened with homelessness, it is implied that girl will be raped if she is homeless, adult viciously cuts girl's hair off as punishment, kidnapping mentions, animal death, hunting, blood, gore, magic/enchantment, magical curses